Have You Ever Taken a Heart?
by Sheepyshavings
Summary: Post-battle, Regina tells Emma she has to get to the clock tower in town. Emma is more worried about their wounds, but at Regina's insistence, Emma gives in and heeds her request. (warning: character death)


"What are you talking about?" Emma half-chokes into Regina's ear as she hauls the other woman up off the ground. She feels a sharp pain shoot through her shoulder where Cora had nicked her with a spell only moments beforehand. The tangy taste of blood is fresh in her mouth.

But that is done. Cora is gone, and as Emma stares at the landscape surrounding her, she sees only the remnants of the destruction caused by a final attempt to rid the town of that wretched woman.

"You need to take me to the clock tower."

Something sticky connects with Emma's hand and she abruptly turns her head to look at down at her fingers on Regina's arm.

"Jesus, Regina!" She only earns a grunt in return. Regina's legs are barely holding her up, and Emma quickly sees the source of her discomfort. Through the torn sleeve of ex-mayor's blazer is a wound that leaves Emma struggling for the right next move.

She ends up deciding to slump onto the battered concrete and let Regina slide into a sitting position. It's clearly the wrong move, because with her unwounded side, Regina grabs Emma by the arm and clenches painfully.

"I said you need to take me to the clock tower."

Emma wants to scream at Regina. There's blood freely flowing from the gash on her arm and Emma is no doctor, but she knows that amount of blood loss won't keep the other woman conscious for much longer.

"No, we need to get you help. You're bleeding, and-" Emma catches on the last word and has to scrunch her eyes shut and take a deep breath.

She feels Regina's touch, gentler this time, squeezing her hand.

"Emma, please take me to the clock tower." Regina's words are tired, quiet.

"Wait!" Emma's eyes light up. She hunches over Regina, holding her hands over the wound and closing her eyes tightly while willing the magic to heal whatever it is Cora did to the woman lying crumpled below her.

"Stop, Emma, please stop, it's not going to do anything." Emma opens her eyes, and sees that, indeed, there's as much blood trickling down Regina's arm as there had been seconds before.

"What did she do to you?" Emma tries not raise her voice, feeling panic rise in her chest and cut off the words as they try to escape her throat.

Regina groans and shifts until she's nearly back on her feet.

"Emma, look at me." Green eyes meet brown. "You need to take me to the clock tower. Do you understand?"

Emma stares pointedly at the woman across from her, daring herself to find a reason not to just haul the other woman off to find help, but she only sees raw desperation. She nods, and hoists Regina up, sprawled across her back, to begin the walk across town.

The streets are eerily empty. Everyone is in hiding, or, Emma realizes with a horrible wave of nausea, dead. She should feel more, she thinks, but everything at that moment is the feeling of Regina draining away beside her and the ache in her shoulder in each step she takes.

The clock tower looms ahead, standing tall among the ruins of the buildings. Only one side has been singed.

"We're here." Emma gets no response and looks down to see Regina's eyes closed. She panics and nearly drops the other woman.

"Regina? Regina!" She shakes the unconscious body she's grasping too tightly and she lets out a cry when brown eyes open groggily.

"I'm sorry." Regina takes in a deep breath and coughs before continuing. "Are we here?"

Emma nods, limping to the edge of the building and carefully placing Regina down against it. She curses her shoulder when it screams in pain at the movement of crouching down to wrap Regina's arm in a piece of her shirt she ripped off.

"Now what? What are we doing?"

Regina lets her head loll to the side and takes in her surroundings.

"Have you ever taken a heart, Emma?"

Emma stares blankly at Regina and for a moment she thinks the other woman has lost so much blood it's getting to her.

"What?"

"A heart. When you reach inside," Regina lifts her arm and extends it, clenching her hand into a fist, "and pull it out."

She smiles at Emma weakly. "Just like magic."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You have to take my heart."

There is no adequate response to such a statement, and there is only silence in the air, punctured by Regina's heavy breathing.

"Regina, you're not thinking straight anymore, we need to get you help, right now." Emma is about to reach down to scoop Regina up, give her a piggyback, anything to get her somewhere safe.

"No. This is the only option."

Emma is frustrated now, not understanding what in the hell is going on, filled with rage and confusion and her shoulder hurts like a bitch.

"What is the only option?" she finally screams. "Regina you're going to die!" It's when she voices it that it becomes real that she can't hold herself up any longer and just slides down the clock tower wall next to Regina and lets pent up tears fall freely.

A hand wipes the tears away from one side of her face and another sob wracks her body.

"Emma, please listen to me. Please. Look at me." Emma turns and sees a steady gaze, dry eyes.

"The way back to Fairytale Land. Listen," she coos again, and Emma finally quiets.

"The only way back, is through the clock tower doors. Remember the elevator leading down to the basement?"

Emma almost laughs. Of course she remembers. It was her first dragon, after all. She nods.

"That's where the portal will be there, you'll see it."

Emma sniffs, coughing and feeling the blood return to her mouth again. She spits to the side, trying to rid herself of the metallic taste.

"What do we need to do?"

"This is what you need to do." Regina is silent for a moment, watching Emma's gaze.

"Me?"

"A heart is needed to open it. A magical heart. Someone with powerful magic."

Realization dawns on Emma and before Regina can say another word, Emma pushes back and her mouth hangs open as if she wants to say something angry, but nothing escapes. Regina reaches out, wincing from the movement, and grabs at the woman in front of her.

"No, Regina, I don't know what the fuck you think is going to happen. I'm not ripping out your heart."

"Listen to me, Ms. Swan!" The voice pulls Emma back, the _Ms. Swan_ catching her off guard.

"This is the only way you, and Henry, and your parents, and this entire town is going to get home."

And Emma wants to scream and argue and give all the reasons why that just isn't true, but she knows Regina isn't lying. Regina doesn't lie anymore, and that fact alone makes Emma's chest constrict into a painful knot.

A hand reaches for her own and her fingers are pulled forward until they collide with Regina's chest. She shudders at the contact, and her stomach churns and she feels like throwing up. But she doesn't.

"I promise, this is the only way. Do you think I would've had the curse be otherwise?" A hint of the former Regina flares up in the dark eyes, and a smile manages to ghost across bruised, battered lips.

Emma shakes her head because she knows Regina. Her fingers are shaking and the color has drained from her face. She feels the warmth of Regina's skin through the shirt.

"Why can't it be my heart?" Emma whimpers, a last attempt.

Regina closes her eyes and takes in a particularly hoarse breath. The sound is awful, and Emma sees flecks of blood leave her mouth when a spluttering cough follows.

"You're the Savior. Can you imagine the look on your parents' faces when I tell them I've taken your heart." There's another intake of air before she can steady herself enough to talk again. "And besides," she reaches up and puts her own hand over Emma's, "I'm not going to last much longer."

"No," Emma starts, trying to remove her hand and clear her head so she can figure out another way for this to go. "No, there has to be something else."

"Emma, I'm dying."

The way she says it so plainly strikes Emma silent. She looks at Regina, her eyes never leaving the placid stare.

"And if you don't take this heart soon, it won't be of any use to you and unless you find someone who will take your heart, you'll all be stuck here."

The words sink in, and Emma's mind slows down until all it can process is brown eyes on her, steady, patient, caring.

"Please," Regina whispers, and it's so defeated that Emma has to look away.

She sucks in a breath and bites down on the insides of her cheeks.

"What do I have to do?"

Regina looks like she nearly smiles, but instead puts pressure on the hand Emma still has over her chest.

"Just push. That's all. Be gentle, you don't want to crush it."

Emma's spine tingles and her eyes are beginning to burn with tears she's trying to hold back. She feels the magic roiling inside her, bouncing through her nerves and finally reaching the tips of her fingers. Closing her eyes, she leans forward just the slightest bit and puts her weight into it. There's a moment of resistance before it feels like her hand is sliding into silk and she opens her eyes.

She wants to scream, but she keeps her nerve steady. Her wrist is just visible sticking out of Regina's chest, a purple glow around it.

"Does it hurt?" she asks.

Regina shakes her head. "No, not at all."

"How do I take the- your heart?" Emma stammers and she feels the first tear slide down her cheek.

"You'll find it," Regina starts, and from the lost look on Emma's face, she adds, "I promise you. Let the magic guide you."

And there it is. Emma startles at the warmth that fills her entire being when the steady thumping reverberates through her arm.

"Do I just pull?" She's having trouble getting the words out, and the ground below her feels like it's erupting into an earthquake she's shaking so hard.

"Just pull."

Emma does, and there is suddenly a hot, beating heart in her hand and Regina's eyes close for a moment a shudder wracks her body.

"What do I do with it?"

Regina opens her eyes again. The image of Emma, everyone's savior, sitting with blood on her face and her clothes ripped and soiled, holding her heart, brings a smile to her face and she can't place why.

"The door in the library, has a spot, in the shape of a heart." She pauses, noticing how quiet her voice has become. Emma seems to have noticed, too, as she squeezes Regina's hand. "All you need to do is put the heart in it."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

"And what will happen to you?"

"Emma, you need to go quickly. It won't last much longer."

"What's going to happen to you when I go inside?" Panic flecks her question.

"Go now, or it's not going to work!" Regina's tone has turned demanding and angry and Emma moves back.

She pulls herself off the ground and cringes with each step to the library entrance. Before she wrenches open the door, she looks back at Regina, sitting against the wall with her head hung. Even from afar, her chest is falling heavily. Emma turns back and moves through the library as fast as she can, finally coming to the back where the ornate door rests. Her eyes flit over the door, looking at the indents and carvings, resting on a concave spot in the bottom corner where a heart would fit perfectly.

With a tenderness she didn't know she possessed, Emma bends down and cups the still-beating heart, guiding it into the carving. A low rumbling noise starts and Emma jumps back, feeling the pain of her movement radiate through her body. The heart glows a bright red, the shine getting brighter and brighter until Emma has to shield her eyes.

Then it's silent. She moves her hands from her face and looks at the door. At least where the door once was. In its place is a shimmering aura. The portal.

Emma takes one last look at the door before retracing her steps back outside, walking as quickly as her wounded body will allow.

"It worked, Regina!"

Emma comes up next to the other woman and bends down to nudge her awake, figuring the she's passed out from the shock of the portal opening.

"Regina, it worked!"

There's no response, and Emma shakes harder, a lump forming in her throat.

"Regina?" She shakes her again, and Regina's head falls to the side.

Emma steps back. "No." She clenches her fists until her nails break the skin and then she keeps clenching harder.

"No!"

Emma tenses up and she begins to shake again.

"No!" The screams that rips from her throat is like no sound she's made before. She can't hold herself upright and drops to her knees with a horrible burst of pain.

"Fuck you, Regina!" Emma's tears burn her cheeks and she reaches out and hits the wall above Regina's head. "Fuck you for leaving me like this! You didn't tell me you were going to die right now. You can't die right now!"

Emma bites her top lip and slams her first into the wall again.

"Fuck you!"

She screams until blood comes out of her throat again and mingles with spit and her shoulder has been strained so much it's gone numb.

In desperation she crumbles next to Regina, bringing her hands up to her own chest and reaching inside. Half-blinded and wrought with sobs, she searches for her heart and plucks it out. She stares at it beating in her hands before placing it over Regina, trying to give it to the other woman.

"Take it!"

But the heart won't enter the body, and all that happens is Emma cringes from the pressure on the organ.

"Please, take it..." she trails off and eventually stops pushing and puts the heart back into her own chest.

She collapses against the wall, thinking she isn't capable of shedding another tear. Everything aches, and she reaches out to rest her hand on Regina's. It's still warm, and she closes her eyes.

"You didn't even let me say goodbye."

•••

Snow and Charming find her there a half hour later. She's passed out from what they assume is exhaustion and her wounds. Snow goes in to check on Regina, whom they both think is out cold. It's only when Snow screams and steps back quickly do they realize she's dead.

They leave her there, unsure of what to do with the body. Charming cradles his daughter in his arms and walks her back to City Hall where they've set up cots and first aid tables.

It takes Emma two days to wake up, and Snow never leaves her daughter's side the whole time. It's eventually decided that Regina's body be wrapped up. No one knows what to do with it otherwise.

When Emma's eyes open, the first thing she does is frantically sit up and glance around the room.

"Regina, where is she?"

Snow grabs her daughter's hand tightly.

"Emma, she's gone."

It all floods back into Emma's memory and she lies back down, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. It feels like a blow straight to her stomach, and before she can suppress the urge, she leans over the cot and heaves onto the ground until her throat burns.

•••

At Emma's insistence, Regina's body is allowed through the portal back to Fairytale Land. They all agree, to some extent, they wouldn't even be going back had it not been for Regina.

Henry takes days to console before he can even look at Emma without running away. It hurts Emma, but she doesn't blame him. His mother is dead, and Emma killed her. Snow begs Emma not to think of it that way, but she brushes it off.

Regina is buried by the lake near the Charming's castle. It suits her, Emma thinks, to be buried somewhere beautiful. Regina's life was full of hatred and ugly demons. It was Emma's final gift.

Sometimes Emma spends hours by the lake while Henry adjusts to this new life. Everyone else eventually picks up where they left off, but Emma never quite catches on. Instead, she often finds herself next to an apple tree that was planted at the head of Regina's grave.

It's early spring, and the blossoms have finally started to open.


End file.
